Lloyd Richards holds his debut novel, 'Stone Maidens,' available on Amazon.com. Richards, a retired lawyer, spent 12 years trying to get his book published. / Courtesy photo

Written by

Lloyd Richards

I worked as a lawyer at National Life for nearly 28 years, raising three children in Montpelier and spending long nights and weekends learning the writing craft because I felt compelled. By 2004 I had a manuscript put together which I thought was ready to send out to literary agents. I received oceans of rejections, and then, in spite of it, the very next morning would get up the nerve to do it all over again, sending out three-chapter sets of my book to see if there are any takers. For weeks, then months, there weren't. "No's" kept filling my mailbox, often no more than a photocopied Chinese cookie-size slip of paper with the words: "Pass. Not for me" along with the undisturbed crisp three-chapter set still clean enough to send out again to the next agent, publisher or editor who I hoped would take notice and ask for more. Like the old-fashioned Vermont winters, the No's kept piling up: December was like January, and February too, March, just more of the same.

The mailman must have been sick of me, at least his carrying arm was. The math of it was simple. The turnstile effect of returned manuscript chapters accumulated at my doorstep in direct proportion to the previous weeks' worth of mailings. At some point, I recognized that my perseverance must be perverse because my head kept popping up with adages like 'Nothing ventured, nothing gained' 'Believe in yourself' 'Failure is the foundation of success' and so on. Even so, it was difficult to rinse myself clear of this repeating pattern of negation, and not believe that 'No thank you, it's not for me' didn't mean anything. That maybe my book wasn't good enough. My editor thought it was. And so I pressed on. I just couldn't let it go.

I knew I was a neophyte to this book writing business and was willing to listen to my editors, my teachers, my wife, and my sister — a successful author herself. Listening, I now realize, was as much responsible for my getting to "Yes" as anything else. And in the spring of 2010 came change, the sparkling voice of an excited agent on the other end of a phone call. Apparently, she loved my book on her first read through. Even so, I was wary. I felt as if I'd somehow hoodwinked her into believing something phony, a writerly mirage. Worse, it meant she herself was unworthy and craving to represent me out of her own desperation. I just couldn't settle with accepting my good fortune. Not yet. Through the summer of 2010 my literary agent and I worked on a line edit of the book and I realized her many suggestions were good criticisms, that she had a sharp eye. Later that fall, we were ready to send out the manuscript to the New York publishing houses. By December all had read it and all had passed.

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To say that I despaired with this last spate of rejections from all the major publishing houses doesn't begin to capture my dark moment. Hearing one publisher's editor's suggestions on how I could improve the tension or another editor's words that she liked the writing well enough and would love to read anything else Richards writes didn't begin to scratch the surface of how trounced I felt after more than 12 years of work (by then) struggling to make this book good enough to see the light of day. Again, somehow, and I cannot explain it, I didn't let it go, as discouraged as I felt.

It's not that I take "no thank you" better than the next unpublished writer, or that I have thicker skin. I don't at all. Beside my bed I keep a card that my sister had sent to me. Its cover read: NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP. My sister's words followed:

"Dear Lloyd,

I like this card-it speaks to me-maybe to you too. It's the encouragement loving parents give to their children. It says-"believe in yourself." No one ever told us that and we have paid the price. Mostly by giving up on ourselves, over and over again. I don't want to give up anymore. Giving up feels worse than hoping for a miracle. So I say never give up. Die trying, hoping, believing. Die fighting. Writing is the only thing I've ever done in my life that feels 100% "me." Not always good but always "me"-for better or worse. I'm glad I found it. You have so much talent. Never never give up.

Love Susie"

I spent the winter and spring of 2011 taking an online workshop, reworking the book for the umpteenth time, adding several new tension-producing scenes, cutting or shortening others, always adding more tension, pace.

Enjoyment of the process as much as my dogged perseverance kept me pushing the story forward, finding fresh improvements, ratcheting up the tension, tying the hunter more inextricably to the hunted, gaining a stronger clearer foothold in my book's inner meaning — the universal story it revealed about human nature — the book was actually yielding itself to me at this late date.

By the summer of 2011 the book had been proofed by my trusted editor of four years and I sent it off to my agent in New York who agreed it did read better, tighter, and was a more tensely coiled page turner than before. Come fall 2011, nearly the same time I retired from National Life, my agent called to say that Amazon Publishing loved the book and offered a contract to buy it. And I said yes.